Reminders, good and bad, of an endless winter

Published 5:23 pm, Thursday, March 6, 2014

Spring arrives officially on March 20, but it's hard to imagine what this year's month of rebirth will be showing off.

The persistent cold tells us winter isn't yet a memory. Besides the temperature and snowfall, there are plenty of other reminders, good and bad, of this seemingly endless winter.

To start with a positive, the days are longer and sunshine is stronger. When the snow disappears, there are the bulbs and perennials whose healthy shoots are nosing up through the damp earth. The snow was good at keeping them cozy and safe from heaving, which dries out exposed roots.

Even the hellebores, whose winter flowers in my garden typically start blooming in January, couldn't put on their first act with their foliage effectively mashed down by the white stuff. Will they boomerang back? (The base foliage on some of the plants has blackened, but that can be trimmed and new leaves should replace them fairly quickly.)

A big plus of all that snow is that we never had to worry about drying winds and lack of moisture. A major benefit of snow cover is that it prevents soil evaporation, and as it melts you know your soil will stay moist. With all the droughts we've had over recent years, that's a major blessing.

Still, all the snow has meant tough going for many shrubs and young trees. Frequently, snowplows pushed piles of snow against them, breaking brittle branches, bending others. (Never try to knock off frozen snow or ice from branches, which can cause breakage, too. Just knock off the powdery stuff before it becomes heavy or gets wet and freezes.)

The drifts that protected lower limbs exposed the upper branches of evergreens. Without the protective spray of an antidessicant, you find leaves and needles burned. I see the strongest evidence of this in the foliage of variegated evergreens, which are weaker to begin with (and some don't tolerate antidessicants). It makes you think twice about where you plant them, as well as those golden-leafed beauties: They lighten up and add interest to green-on-green areas of the garden, but they need special consideration during winter.

Plants with tender buds also will fare better in areas that avoid early morning sun, so nix those east-facing sites if you plan on adding any of these to your garden landscape. What happens is that early morning sun causes frozen foliage to defrost too quickly, rupturing plant cell walls.

But even those toughies and non-variegated evergreens can be affected by fast-changing temperatures, and we can still anticipate those occurring this month. Variegated holly and the leucothoe in my own yard are very vulnerable. Tips of bulbs and some perennials, such as hydrangeas, suffer, too, from drastically changing temperatures -- warm days followed by freezing temperatures that fried their buds and leaves.

Also avoid high-nitrogen fertilizers in fall, which encourage soft, abundant leaf growth that is susceptible to damage in spring.

The temptation is to whack everything back that's damaged, but that's not the answer. The University of Connecticut's Home and Garden center suggests everything be left alone. Pick off the brown leaves if you must. The leaf buds below, which may have been burned as well, will most probably swell up and open, replacing those dead leaves. They may have brown edges.

"Terminal buds, which often look dead, may grow out," an expert assured me.

And who knows what the spring will bring. We've all seen flower buds on rhododendron open on bare branches, which leaf out soon after. But don't take my word for it. If you can't believe those stems you are looking at are not dead, take sharp shears and slice through a bud or scrape some bark from a stem. If there is white or green underneath, and a twig is flexible, the branch is alive. Give it time.

How long will you have to wait to see new life? It could take until June. And cross your fingers if you grow roses; they could have been particularly hard hit this winter. Wait until the end of the month to see new growth, then cut the canes back to live tissue. Perennials with old growth left on them (I'm thinking of unpruned chrysanthemum plants, for one group) should do better than those that were fall pruned, since old growth protects the plants' crowns and that vulnerable new growth while the weather stays iffy.

While we'd all like to put those gift plants and patio plants outside, except for bulbs and pansies, keep the potted ones inside unless you can pull them in nightly. This spring has been slow in coming and plants may be late to bloom; early birds like the magnolias and peach trees are particularly vulnerable. Once the snow ends, we could still have hard frosts.

When you can, start planting trees and shrubs and helping the ones you have to get a leg up on the season. Planting experts suggest giving stressed trees and shrubs a biostimulant to foster new root development that may have been impaired by the dry periods of the last several years.

Now also is a good time to test and amend your soil that may be lacking trace minerals or more important nutrients. Check with a garden center for kits.

Finally, if this was a hard winter for plants and people, think about all those deer. As new fawns arrive, the pressure is on. Will your yard supply the five pounds of green goodness per animal deer families need daily to survive? If you can't fence, spray -- deer will eat new growth even on plants they don't typically gravitate to -- the tips of hyacinths, for example, which they normally avoid. You must spray early and regularly to be effective. Deer, like people, have been taught to try, try and try again.